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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28104414">in your best friend's arms</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowersocialist/pseuds/sunflowersocialist'>sunflowersocialist</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (1990), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Non-Canonical Character Death, Sad Ending, Self-Destruction, Suicide, The House on 28 Neibolt Street (IT), kind of, opposite of a fix it so like. a break it harder scenario</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:54:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,290</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28104414</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowersocialist/pseuds/sunflowersocialist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He nods in acknowledgment. His brain seems to decide before he does. "No, I know. That's why I...I'll stay here with him. You guys go."</p><p>The choice is not one he would have thought to make, but now that he's said it, he knows it's the only way he wants their story to end. A chasm of memories, the reprieve of remembrance, and the acceptance of surrender. </p><p>"You can't be serious," Beverly breathes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, implied bev/ben but like before anything even happens</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>in your best friend's arms</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The house crumbles around them in a roaring silence. The creak of the floorboards above them and the grinding, broken pieces of the foundation as they turn one another into dust are nothing but background noise Richie cannot force himself to think about, to even notice. His friends scream blurred pleas to him over the static of the world falling apart over their heads, but the sweat on his skin has gone cold and he isn't listening to them anymore. He can feel someone's hand firm on his shoulders as they attempt to pull him away.</p><p>Down here, Eddie still looks like Eddie. The curve of his cheek, half concealed by the thick pad of a bandage, the stiff frown his body had laxed into, the icy mountain range of his knuckles. The only differences are the missing parts, the cracked and fragmented vertebrae, the sinew left spilled on the ground, on Richie's shirt, his glasses. There is nothing victorious about this. He feels trapped, between It's world and the real one, and he can't recognize which one was which. Eddie's face, jilted and overlapping as Richie tries to see him clearly through one cracked lens and two eyes blinded by a raging flood of emotions he cannot name nor place. </p><p>Bill coughs, dust and broken pieces of foundation dotting his hair. Without looking directly at Richie, he mumbles, "Maybe he's meant to be down here."  His jaw clenches tight as he observes Eddie, still lying there with gutter water seeping into the backs of his jeans. "Yeah, I think he is." </p><p>"No," Richie spits, without thinking, without meaning to speak at all. "I-I don't want that. We can't <em> do </em>that. Not to him." </p><p>"C'mon, Rich," Mike mutters. "We can't carry him back up there, we'll never make it in time."</p><p>Before he came back, when Derry was just a town sign in his rearview mirror and his friends had become watercolor blurs in the background of an abstract painting he had come to terms with never understanding, Richie had been grateful for the ambiguity of his past. The scars he couldn't erase: the physical one on his hand, the comical fear of clowns, of secrets, of honesty, the way that when someone touched him, he tried both to curl into the feeling and shove out of it, were his remaining proof that, whatever happened in his old hometown, he didn't want to remember. It was better to forget. </p><p>When he first returned, the only thing he could feel was guilty. His survival had been a testament that something good enough stayed in that town with him when he was growing up, but he'd willingly sacrificed it, his friends, just so he could avoid a fucking therapy appointment. Stan died because of his memories, and now Richie was left with the blurry image of him in his head and no chance to reconcile it with the man he'd now never get to know. They were a fucking car crash pileup of chicken wire and fraying bandages they used to hold themselves together in the years between when they left Derry and when they returned. Weary metal boning constructing chests full of debris and broken glass, eternally brush burned against gravel roads that refused to be merciful. </p><p>A self conscious shame turned his blood into an oily, suffocating intoxication the first time he saw Eddie again. The flood of memories, of how intimately Richie wanted to know him, and how much he hated himself for wanting it. </p><p>At first glance, the day before, so much of Eddie had changed it all looped back around to familiar. The curve of his cheek, the tight purse of a hidden smile, the geography of the back of his hand. His mouth had not become any less sharp, whiskey-slick firebrand of viscous defense and fierce declarations. Richie wanted to wrap himself in the shape of Eddie's voice until it felt like home again. He walked back into his life like he'd never left, and then filled Richie's mind until there was no corner of it left not occupied by Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. It was the name that had written itself over Richie's childhood so many times that it turned his memories into a blank, dark void. He could not believe he forgot him. He couldn't believe he remembered. </p><p>He nods in acknowledgment. His brain seems to decide before he does. "No, I know. That's why I...I'll stay here with him. You guys go."</p><p>The choice is not one he would have thought to make, but now that he's said it, he knows it's the only way he wants their story to end. A chasm of memories, the reprieve of remembrance, and the acceptance of surrender. </p><p>"You can't be serious," Beverly breathes. Tears cut through the layer of dirt marking her perfect face. Ben stands tall behind her, and Richie watches as they slowly gravitate into each other's space without being fully conscious of the movement. A new shock of pain, Richie stumbles back, away from them, towards Eddie. "Richie, c'mon, you can't."</p><p>To Richie, the time between their last goodbyes and now were just another way to cope with not having each other. The conversations buzzing with news of marriages and book deals and Ben looking like a sexy firefighting pole dancer all fell away until all that remained was a shitty present and a glimmering future. </p><p>His era of amnesia had bred nothing creative from him except a half-formed career, ghost-written and overperformed, an empty apartment in L.A., and his mom calling him every other month asking when he was ever going to settle down and get hitched. It led to him searching for people he didn't remember inside people he'd never stick around enough to know, hollowing out their bodies until Richie could slip into their skin, because at least the warmth was familiar. He had nothing to show for his time away from his friends except some ticket stubs, a few tabloid articles, and a trail of broken people that he'd used trying to Frankenstein his way into being loved. </p><p>Even last night, in the parking lot that reeked of grease and 80's nostalgia, the neon sign beaming in the damp asphalt like hope he thought he was too old to entertain, he knew. He <em> knew, </em> with every atom in his body and every ounce of his heart, that he would have to fight like hell to achieve the Elysian potential of his imagined future, but as long as he had them, he could do it. He selfishly and foolishly tumbled into overindulgent thoughts of reciprocation and retirement, of riding the coattails of his failed dream job and letting it deposit him wherever it allowed, with Eddie right next to him. He'd be pissed and frowning to hide his smile, and he'd curse Richie out the moment he saw him, but he would be there. <em> They </em> would be there. Together.</p><p>But they fought like hell. Richie fought with every atom in his body and every breath he'd ever held in his weary and panic-seized lungs, and they killed It. But they still lost. They lost everything. </p><p>"I won't leave him here!" He yells, over the chaos that came naturally to a haunted house on its deathbed. Beverly flinches, a familiar thing, a reaction rehearsed so many times that Richie can almost see every time she has ever done it before, every instance of it laid out in her history before him. Still, he doesn't apologize. He can't apologize. He needs his friends to leave him here. He needs them to say goodbye and climb out of this hellhole and come to terms with the fact that three out of three is the best and only way they are ever going to survive any of this. </p><p>Tears pour down his face faster than he can stand, pitiful sobbing wrenching its way out of his chest like someone took a sledgehammer and threw it through his ribcage. He's an ugly crier, Eddie told him that once, and he turns to him again now just expecting to hear it once more. Just once. He can't stand to look at the others anymore, and he wonders if some part of him fears they will be able to make him leave. </p><p>"We won't make it if we stay," Mike mutters, and Richie doesn't blame him. He can hear the lump in his throat, the choked up way he speaks like he is just as helpless as Richie is, and he is. In different ways, they all are.</p><p>"Mike," Ben argues, but he's interrupted by chunks of concrete that fall further back in the dark cave, the old and rotting living room floor coming in with it. His feet shuffle and Richie can feel his eyes burning holes into the back of his head, but he still doesn't turn to look. </p><p>Richie still can't remember all of his childhood, of Derry, of his friends. But he can remember enough. He can remember being sixteen and so afraid of the dark his mom made him go to therapy, he remembers him and Eddie pressing the palms of their hands up to each other's, until the jagged scars on their palms aligned, and the silent promise they shared to never leave one another. He can remember when Bill bust his lip open after tripping over the spokes of his bike, and when Ben would underline parts of books he read that reminded him of them. He can remember looking at Eddie and thinking <em> I'm going to love him for the rest of my life. </em>And he did. And he will. It won't be as much of a long term goal as he originally thought. </p><p>It's a promise Richie is proud to have kept. Even when he didn't know it, even when someone could have held a gun to his head and asked him who Edward Francis Kaspbrak was and he would have to be shot right there in the street, even when he was trying to scoop out his insides, to convince someone to wear his body like a warm embrace, even when he knew full well that it could get him killed, loving Eddie his entire life is the one promise he always kept. To not know someone, to have the most significant person in your entire life be a total stranger in your memory, and yet your most ardent devotion, is something Richie knew he will never get again. He never wants to. </p><p>In the presence of his apathy, his friends turn out of the carved out den of earth and find their way back to safety, to each other. They start walking, and Richie knows it's to spare his feelings, to remind him that they really hate this choice he's made, but that they can't do anything to stop it, before they think he can't hear them anymore, and start running. They are desperate for the neon dream Richie held in his arms the night before, the potential of improvement, and Richie can't blame them for chasing something just because he has already given up on it. Distantly, he wishes they will find with each other what Richie wanted to find with Eddie. He hopes that, someday, this town will once again become a dot in the timeline of their lives they could not bother to remember, and he will forgive them endlessly if it does. He will not hold it against them if he once again fades away in their minds, if it means they can create something beautiful out of whatever is left in the empty space he used to occupy.</p><p>Richie sighs as the whole world becomes an earthquake and a thunderstorm of dust and ashes falling above them, and he sits down next to Eddie. He takes his hand, which still has a drop of warmth left in his thin wrists and paling skin, and Richie clutches the fleeting comfort in the moment, the proof that someone once existed in the husk of Eddie's hollow body, and that the person was someone he loved. </p><p>Eddie is the only thing worth staying for, Richie thinks. But he's probably wrong. He could run for his life and join his friends, jump into the quarry like when they were younger and wash this all away. He'd let his fingers prune up before moving back to Cali, buying a new apartment, maybe even getting a dog. He could write his own material, go to therapy, flex a brand new Zoloft prescription if he really felt so inclined, but he wouldn't. The thought of improving now, of continuing his life while Eddie wasn't there next to him, felt useless. He was a tightly wound ball of repressed energy, and he is allowing it to fall apart. </p><p>Secretly, so private a thought he would die with it, he hoped that when, <em> if </em> , he woke up after this, in some blinding, bright place, that Eddie would be there waiting for him. But even if he isn't, even if the big guy upstairs, or whoever runs that place, tells him Eddie has actually filed an afterlife restraining order on him and never wants to see Richie in the last life, this life, <em> or </em>the next, Richie will find comfort in his eternity. He dies with the knowledge that he is, at least, next to Eddie somewhere, even if that place is a monstrous cavern under the discarded remains of Neibolt house. </p><p>The tightly wound ball in his chest flames as the world caves in. Richie squeezes Eddie's hand, a grounding force, and for the first time in his life, he lets go. </p><p>It is a kind and gentle unraveling. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>sorry?? idk it's a vibe tho no? </p><p>tumblr: sunflowersocialist !!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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